The Messenger
by avanti90
Summary: AU. On a Barrayar still occupied by the Cetagandans after half a century, General Count Aral Vorkosigan of the Resistance receives an unexpected visitor.


Kou led Aral to the tent in the center of the camp. "She refused to leave without talking to you, sir," he said nervously. "And it was too late for her to leave anyway..."

Aral glowered dangerously at the few soldiers who were hanging about casting curious glances at his tent, then opened the flap. There was a young woman seated comfortably on the worn carpet, appraising his spartan tent as if she were a welcome guest instead of a problem. He remembered seeing her once, many years ago in Vortala's district, a child following her mother in the background while the Count and his soldiers debated strategy.

She stood up as he entered. "My lord Regent."

Aral looked at her and tried to keep his frustration under control. He'd lost two good men to a Cetagandan attack this morning, his supplies were running low, and he had no place in his camp for a woman, certainly not for a High Vor girl who looked as if she was going to a party in the capital instead of a tent in the middle of the Dendarii mountains. "I thought I had asked General Vortala to send me his battle plans," he said acidly. "Not his granddaughter."

She had courage enough to meet his eyes, at least. "He did. He also said that the Cetas were less thorough about searching women than men." She folded over one long sleeve of her jacket and tore open the hem, pulling out a tightly rolled sheaf of papers. Aral took them, surveying the several pages of closely written code. "I have commanded my grandfather's communications section for the last three years."

Aral eyed her dubiously. She was just a girl, surely no more than twenty years old, looking quite harmless. "And the Cetas let you through their checkpoints, did they?" His eyes moved down, noting the long knife half-concealed in her belt. Something in her stance suggested to him that there were more weapons elsewhere.

"Oh, no," she replied. "I passed through the first three easily enough, but at the fourth the Cetas decided to take me back to their base - for questioning, of course." She held out another sheaf of documents. Raising an eyebrow at her, Aral accepted them. But these were not Vortala's. He flipped through them; orders from the Cetagandan governor's office, plans for troop movements, keys to Cetagandan military codes. Aral sat down and stared. This was the biggest windfall they'd had in months; Negri might even smile at this.

"So, General," said Lady Alys, breaking his reverie. "Do you wish me to carry any messages back?"

Aral looked up at her, and saw the insignia of three ghem-lords in her outstretched palm. She was smiling at him, pride clear in her eyes.

"Perhaps," he said slowly, "you should stay here for a while."

* * *

It took Lady Alys a little over a week to reorganize Aral's entire communications division. By the end, even some of the battle-hardened Dendarii veterans he'd inherited from his father were afraid of her.

"It's no life for a woman," Kou muttered, when Padma's latest shipment of weapons from the Hegen Hub was ambushed and Aral and his men were trapped under fire with a dozen crates full of explosives, when they lost five men in a single hour and had to abandon their camp for the third time in three weeks. Aral wanted to point out that she was still alive, that her kill count was higher than Kou's, that he'd seen grown men throw up at the sight of corpses like the five that had fallen around her and she'd kept on firing. But they whispered it louder after the next battle, and the next.

Aral watched her rise every day at dawn to train with men twice her size, watched her make up what she lacked in strength by courage and wits and sheer sneakiness, and he knew then that they were right; it was no life for a woman. His mother and sister had died for less than this, for only following his father's troops. His grandmother and aunts had died for even less, for being in Vorkosigan Vashnoi, for being Vorkosigans. His wife - well, that had been a different story, and not one he wished to remember.

When summer came, he sent her back with messages for Vortala. Amid requests for troops and supplies he added an order: _Send her to the capital and keep her there. Safely. _She went without protest, and Aral tried to put her out of his mind.

A year passed, and Aral had more than enough on his mind. There were battles in Hassadar and in Vorhalas' district, Marilac was invaded, and in the autumn the Cetas released biological weapons into the water of the Dendarii mountains. Winter came, harsher than ever before, and they couldn't shift camp to the foothills because that was exactly what the Cetas were expecting them to do.

Aral was sitting in his freezing tent reading over increasingly dismal troop reports, when the flap opened and she walked in, older, straighter and prouder, shaking snow off a long, thick, and obviously Cetagandan synthetic fur coat.

"General Vorkosigan," she said, before Aral had stopped staring. "I've come to tell you all about my society season."

Aral blinked at her for a full minute. By the time he came up with a reply, she had already started talking. Aral sat and listened to the stories of the balls she'd attended in the capital, the Cetagandan officers she'd danced with, the proposals she'd received from Vor collaborators, and what they'd whispered in her ears.

After the first hour he summoned Negri. After the second hour, Negri started taking notes. By the time she had finished, Aral had a list of seven men who were betraying him, fifteen who could be bought, five she had already bought, and an intelligence network consisting entirely of ladies' seamstresses. He tried to imagine what his father would have said, but all he could think was that his mother would have smiled.

She looked up at him, her dark eyes glinting brightly in the dimly lit tent. "So, my lord, if you hope to keep me _safe_ in the capital - I fear there may be a small difficulty."

If Aral hadn't known better, he'd have thought Negri might just, possibly, be laughing. "And what will I tell your family when you are executed by the Cetagandans?" he demanded, trying to be angry. "Or held captive?"

"That I too am Vor," she replied, lifting her chin and matching his gaze. "That I too chose to serve Barrayar."

A week later they were captured, and somewhere in between weeping at their feet and begging their protection, she managed to charm the Cetagandan officers out of their wits. He didn't see her performance, but he saw her face while they slit the throats of the drugged Cetagandans, only her cheeks paling, her lips tightening in pain while she did what was necessary. After that, no one said one word about what women should or should not do. Even Kou kept quiet.

That night while setting up yet another makeshift camp in the caves, Aral gave in and asked her to be his Countess. She agreed, and from that moment on he had no hope of her safety.

* * *

The week after their wedding, Aral took his wife to Bonsanklar, traveling in disguise, on foot or on horseback. The Cetagandan conquerors preferred their own modern resorts; the ocean town was still the summer retreat of the Vor, and island of peace on the war-torn planet.

They sat on the summit of a small hill overlooking an isolated beach, and waited. After a while a small boy came into view, chasing a bouncing beach ball half as big as him. A tall blond woman followed him slowly, watching him with alert eyes.

They watched from a distance while the boy splashed into the sea and fought bravely with the water, then waded out in triumph carrying his wayward ball. He turned around and they could see his face, a pair of familiar hazel eyes blinking against the sunlight, familiar features lit up by a child's innocent laughter.

Alys let out a faint gasp. "He's -" She cut herself off, but Aral knew what the next word would have been. "Real? Yes, he is." All of Barrayar whispered that Gregor Vorbarra was a fiction, only a name behind which Aral Vorkosigan could hold the Imperium. Aral and Negri had started the rumor themselves; it was safer that way. It made Aral laugh, because if there was any fiction left on Barrayar, it was the one called the Imperium.

"He seems such a normal boy," Alys remarked, watching Gregor discard the ball for his other toys.

"Let him be," Aral said. "Let him laugh for as long as he can. When the time comes for him to rule this planet, he will rule as an Emperor, not a soldier. With peace and mercy, not bloodshed. If he has the chance."

He didn't say what he knew: that the chance would never come, that the Cetagandans would never leave. That he fought on because he was Vor and because he had promised his father and because there was nothing else, no peace, no victory. That he would condemn their children to a lifetime of war. She was young; she still believed.

_"__When_ he has the chance," Alys corrected, linking her hand with his. Aral said nothing. They sat together, hand in hand, and watched the sun set over the future of their world, lying on his stomach whispering secrets to a stuffed stegosaurus in a sand castle.


End file.
